


legacy

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Emil Hawke, Gen, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:46:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Leandra's passing, Hawke reflects on their relationship and the expectations no longer hanging overhead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	legacy

Even now, even with Leandra’s ghost haunting the empty rooms of this huge house that has never been Hawke’s home, there will be no bending to her will.

“I _am_ sorry, Mother,” Hawke says. “I’m sorry for coming too late.”

But that is all Hawke is sorry for.

What Leandra wanted: the prim and proper lady, the eldest, an Amell to fill the gaps of a dead daughter and dead parents and dead titles—it will never be and even now Hawke has no regret. Some days, he binds his breasts and wears Carver’s old clothes all over Kirkwall, enjoying the drinks and the drunks in Lowtown’s Bar, drawing the scorn of Leandra’s “old friends,” their now-neighbours who wouldn’t dream of marrying their sons off to a foolish girl who refuses to behave like a lady, who certainly doesn’t behave like an Amell. Some days, she is comfortable enough in the bands the other women wear under their shirts and she doesn’t mind that her hair’s grown out and that her face and fingers are a bit delicate looking and that a man in the market calls her beautiful.

It doesn’t change anything; nothing will change Hawke except for Hawke.

“That’s my girl,” pa used to say. And he was sometimes right. Hawke would like to think that if he were here now, he’d _know,_  that he’d say, just as often, “That’s my boy!”

It seems Leandra meant to fight to her death and ever after, however, for there are bits and pieces of their fights left behind. Unfinished dresses Hawke will never wear, letters of intent to the suitors Hawke will never want and of apology to the nobles Hawke will never befriend. Memories, mostly, of the arguments Hawke never seemed to win and the tears Leandra shed for her “precious, beautiful girl,” for the hair cut too short or the name never answered to or the grace never carried. There was no meeting part-way, no bending or bowing or taking a knee—not from Leandra and not from Hawke. And not now either.

Hawke rests a hand against the singular portrait of their incomplete family. Kirkwall has not been kind to any of them, not that the world ever much was.

And though sometimes a woman, Hawke will never be a Daughter of the Amell’s, for Hawke is also a man and also a Fereldan and also a Hawke.


End file.
